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Sapphire HD 7870 Review

Conclusion:

I was very impressed with how close to the 7950 the HD 7870 performs, however, the price difference between the two cards is so small that the performance we saw makes perfect sense. Sapphire's 7870 that we looked at today will run you about $360, and for that price it offers great performance. The card performed, for the most part, just under the GTX 580, which is priced considerably higher. Not only that, but with the 28nm architecture the Sapphire HD 7870 runs extremely cool. The card also draws a very small amount of power as well, which is perfect for the energy efficient gamer!

The Sapphire HD 7870 offered extremely playable performance in every single one of our game benchmarks at the 1920x1080 resolution. That being said, if you are planning to use three 24" or bigger monitors in Eyefinity mode, you may want to consider picking up a more powerful card. While the Sapphire HD 7870 is perfectly capable of powering an Eyefinity setup, it did struggle with the games and settings we threw at it. As far as overclocking goes though, the card exceeded my expectations. Since the stock clock of the GPU already exceeded the 1GHz mark I really wasn't expecting a whole lot of headroom, however, I was easily able to get another 200MHz out of it! That extra 200MHz offered up a nice little performance increase, which I'm sure would be welcomed by anyone.

When the HD 7870 was released AMD stated that it was the perfect card to upgrade to if you are currently using a 5XXX series GPU. I have to say that I agree with that statement. If you are currently using a 5XXX generation card, and are actually looking to upgrade your current setup, the Sapphire HD 7870 would make a great choice. It performs extremely well, and at $360 it's not going to do a whole lot of damage to your wallet!